


Stay

by engmaresh



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fluff Bingo Quarter 2, Grief/Mourning, Light Angst, Original Character Death(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-27
Updated: 2019-05-27
Packaged: 2020-03-20 09:51:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18990265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/engmaresh/pseuds/engmaresh
Summary: Practical and efficient, Kuvira's not good at heart to hearts. But sometimes all she needs to do is stay.





	Stay

**Author's Note:**

> I realise I'm kinda stretching the definition of fluff here, but this was written for the square [bad day] on my Fluff Bingo card.

The cabin was mostly dark when Kuvira opened the door and cautiously peered in. Only a thin stream of light peered in from under the drawn blinds, the setting sun’s orange glow refracting off the lenses of Baatar’s glasses. Baatar himself was slumped at the table, head pillowed in his arms. Kuvira put her files down on the floor, before carefully pulled off her boots to avoid making any noise. Then she tiptoed on socked feet over to the desk, stepping around the minefield of crumpled paper scattered across the floor.

Gently, trying not to wake him, she carded her hand through his unmade hair. Without the usual product to slick it back, it fell in soft spikes across his head. The sides, not clipped in several days, were beginning to grow back in, and Kuvira traced her fingers over the fine hair, going against the grain to enjoy the short bristly feeling against her fingertips. When Baatar began to stir, she pulled her hand back, resting it at the nape of his neck. She kept it there as he slowly woke and sat back, her thumb rubbing small concentric circles into his skin, the only sign she gave of her presence.

Baatar grunted in acknowledgement, feeling about on his face for his glasses before he remembered he’d taken them off. Thanks to the thicker frames, he spotted them quickly enough, and put them on before turning to her with a bleary scowl on his face.

“What are you doing here?” His voice was a croak.

“I wanted to know how you’re doing,” she said softly, continuing with the gentle touches at the back of his neck. “You wanted space, I gave you space. But it’s been two days.”

“I’ve been eating. And showering. And working.” He swept a hand at the corner of the room, where she only just noticed scroll upon scroll of drafting paper lined up against the wall, each labelled with Baatar’s neatly cramped handwriting.

“Any new ideas?”

“No,” he groaned, and reached under his glasses to rub the grit from his eyes. “I’ve just been thinking, if I’d had the--”

“Baatar.”

“The mecha! If I’d known how to operate it--”

“Baatar.”

“Dammit, Kuvira!” He slammed his fist on the table. A pen jumped off it, clattering to the floor. “I could have saved him.” Swearing softly, he pulled his glasses from his face and sent them skittering across the table--with a wave off her free hand Kuvira caught them before they slid over the edge and bent them back onto the desk. Baatar, slumped back onto the table, was muttering angrily to himself.

“It’s not your fault, Baatar.”

“I was there,” he continued stubbornly. “I could have done something.”

Her hand stilled momentarily at his neck. “If you’d done more than you already have, you’d have died too.”

Baatar sighed, a full body sigh that sent the breath shivering out of him. “I miss him already,” he said quietly.

“I’m so sorry, Baatar.” There wasn’t anything else she knew to say. Kuvira didn’t have any childhood friends. As a child, she’d struggled to make connections. Even now, as a grown woman, she found it hard. She hadn’t known Salim all that well, but what Baatar and Salim had had, she knew it had been special. And to lose it like this…. The more practical side of her worried about the loss of a skilled, level-headed army medic. But the practical side of her was not who Baatar needed right now.

“You don’t have to write the letter,” Kuvira told him gently. “As his commanding officer--.”

“No,” said Baatar, sitting back again so quickly he dislodged her hand. “I need to do it.”

“The mail is going out tomorrow,” Kuvira said apologetically. “If you don’t get it out tomorrow, his mother will only get it--”

“I’ll get it done,” he growled.

“Okay,” she said, unruffled by his anger. Grief did different things to different people, and she’d both witnessed and run the gamut of emotions herself far too often of late. Deep down, a part of her was afraid she was slowly becoming numb to it. Meanwhile Baatar had put his glasses back on, and had started dragging his pen through ink. She took a step back and caught him twitch. Feeling the empty space at his back where she’d been.

“Is it all right if I stay?” she asked, though she already knew the answer. “I brought paperwork.”

“It’s always the paperwork with you these days, isn’t it?” Baatar grumbled, but she detected an undercurrent of relief in his voice.

“With great responsibility…” She walked back to retrieve the files she left by the door. “I’ll take the bunk, yeah?”

Baatar nodded.

As she made herself comfortable, he began scooting closer in his chair, bringing paper, pen and ink with him on his writing tray. Once she’d settled, he tucked his feet in the small of her back, between her and the pillow she was leaning against. It wasn’t the most comfortable of positions, but after two days, it was just nice to have him close again. She leaned back, leafing through the first pile of papers, a report on the new metalbending recruits she’d left behind in Ba Sing Se, being dragged through boot camp by Commander Guan.

Across from her, Baatar was...not writing a letter. Or more like writing bits of it then leaving off to doodle something in a corner. She understood his hesitance. Putting words on paper made things real. Writing Salim’s death notification meant having to accept his best friend was dead. Killed in _their_ war.

“Baatar,” she said gently.

He sighed again, crumpling the piece of paper and throwing it over his shoulder.

“My offer still stands.”

“No.” Baatar shook his head. “He’d do the same for me. I owe it to him. And I can’t put if off forever. Sal wouldn’t want that either. If I get this done,” and he said the words like he’d repeated them to himself many times over, “I can move on, like he’d want me to. Keep doing the work he believed in.”

Kuvira nodded.

“Just...stay here with me. Please.” The words were soft, almost like an absently murmured afterthought, though the way Baatar peered at her over the rim of his glasses told her it was anything but.

Kuvira reached behind and gave one of his ankles a comforting squeeze.

“Of course. You didn’t have to ask.”

**Author's Note:**

> Salim made his first appearance in [Smoke and Mirrors](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18376304/chapters/43547219).


End file.
